Disney teams with The Trade Desk to boost connected TV ad business

Disney and The Trade Desk, the media-buying platform that works with advertisers to bid for digital ad inventory, have a new deal to work together in connected TV and to apply new post-cookie ad technology to target commercials to viewers. On Tuesday, Disney and The Trade Desk announced the deal without disclosing financial terms. In March, Disney said it would pursue a partnership with The Trade Desk to expand its programmatic ad business, ramping up automated ad delivery as Disney develops its ad-supported streaming video properties like Disney+ and Hulu. This new deal allows The Trade Desk’s advertisers to use Unified ID 2.0, an advertising identity tool that doesn’t rely on cookies, to target ads by matching the ID with Disney viewers. The deal will open ad inventory on Hulu, Freeform, ESPN, National Geographic, ABC and FX, and it covers streaming and linear TV. Disney+ has not yet launched its planned ad-supported version of the app. Subscribe to Ad Age Sign up now for the latest industry news and analysis Click here Disney has been developing its advertising and data platform with new products like a “clean room,” which is a hub for marketers to compile audiences for ads and to analyze ad campaigns. Clean rooms have boomed as an option within ad platforms, such as those run by NBC Universal and Roku, as they are seen as more privacy-safe methods of commingling data without sharing the direct identities of consumers. The Trade Desk already works with streaming publishers like Fubo, Tubi and AMC, but Disney is the first major broadcast network to integrate with UID 2.0. The deal allows advertisers to use UID 2.0 to match with viewers in Disney’s “audience graph,” the announcement said. “The growth of our relationship with The Trade Desk is a milestone in addressability and automated buying at scale, and the latest step as we use technology to enable advertisers to buy once to deliver everywhere across Disney,” said Aaron LaBerge, president and chief technology officer at Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution, in the announcement. Shifts in the market Media companies are in the middle of the battle for connected TV ad dollars, which are swelling as linear TV growth wanes. Disney, NBC Universal, Paramount and more are all developing ad-supported streaming services, competing with YouTube, Amazon and others. Netflix is a new entrant, too, after announcing designs to build an ad business. Netflix has been in talks with ad tech companies to strategize how to quickly enter the market. Connected TV ad spending is expected to hit $19 billion this year in the U.S., an increase of 33.1% year-over-year, according to eMarketer. Meanwhile, there are major shifts in the overall online ad market, as Apple and Google make traditional programmatic advertising more difficult. There are privacy changes to devices and web browsers that decrease the targeting capabilities of ads. Apple has already dropped support for third-party cookies on the Safari web browser, and Google plans to do the same next year. Advertisers are looking for alternatives, and The Trade Desk has adopted UID 2.0, which is one of dozens of identity solutions being developed. The company claims that UID 2.0 restores value to the ad ecosystem by improving targeting, and increases the price of ads. In the case of Disney, if commercials command higher prices, that could reduce the “ad load,” or the number of commercial interruptions. A Trade Desk spokesperson said that UID 2.0 could keep ad loads to less than 5 minutes every hour, compared to 16 to 20 minutes on linear TV. “We are unlocking the opportunity for our customers to activate their first-party data at scale programmatically against some of the world’s most premium content,” said Tim Sims, chief revenue officer at The Trade Desk, in the announcement.

Disney teams with The Trade Desk to boost connected TV ad business

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